


Those Heavenly Limbs

by grapehyasynth



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Feelings, Fluff, Fluff with feelings, M/M, Massages, POV David Rose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22927729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: Patrick needs a massage. David finds he likes giving them. Also, feelings.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 53
Kudos: 293





	Those Heavenly Limbs

**Author's Note:**

> There's a tiny reference to this week's episode towards the end, just a heads up if you haven't seen it yet! This came to me fairly fully-formed last night and I just threw it together today, in blatant defiance of my "consider these fic ideas?" list i've been compiling. Not much of a plot here. 
> 
> Title from "Beige" by Yoke Lore. The lyric "Do you wonder if every stupid little thing has led us to this?" always sends me into deep David/Patrick feelz. 
> 
> Also, fun fact, "chiropractic" is both an adjective and a noun and i HATE THAT it feels so awkward.

It starts innocuously enough, on a Thursday night while they’re watching  _ Love and Basketball _ . (That’s David’s generous compromise, since Patrick’s been so very busy with rehearsals. “It’s a sports movie!” he exclaims, when pressed to explain how exactly it’s a compromise. “Google calls it a  _ sports drama _ !” He doesn’t even fast-forward through the basketball bits, which he would do if alone.) Patrick keeps rolling his shoulders restlessly, and it’s distracting David from the mounting tension between Quincy and Monica. 

“Can I help you with that?” he finally snaps. 

Patrick turns to look at him, more wide-eyed than usual. “Sorry?” 

“You keep-” David wriggles his shoulders exaggeratedly. 

“Yeah, I’m so tight,” Patrick sighs, without a hint of recognition of how  _ that _ sounds when David’s already keyed up by all the love and all the basketball. “I’ve been stretching after rehearsal but I still - can’t-” He presses his right shoulder back with the palm of his hand and winces. 

“Okay, no, come here,” David tuts. He drags the coffee table to the edge of the couch and maneuvers Patrick to sit on it, his back to David. 

“You don’t have to-” 

David brushes that off, settling in behind Patrick. “I did this for my mom all the time during her mime phase. And touching my boyfriend’s shoulders is scarcely a hardship. Besides, you’re short enough that I can still watch the movie this way.” It also feels like a pleasant personal challenge, to see how effectively he can reduce Patrick to warm, lazy, blissed-out satisfaction with just his fingers; usually that requires taking their clothes off. 

“Um.” David can feel Patrick’s chuckle in his chest as he begins kneading the base of Patrick’s neck with his thumbs. “Thank you, I guess?” 

“Just relax, honey.” 

Patrick exhales, his shoulders slumping a bit as he obeys David automatically. David’s fingers stutter at the meaty juncture of shoulder and neck, thrown by Patrick’s ready submission, but he recovers quickly, digging in to the muscle, questing for knots and little noises of release from Patrick. 

“Hard to picture your mom having a mime phase,” Patrick comments. “She likes to talk almost as much as Ray does.” 

“Shhh, Patrick, I’m watching the movie.” 

  
  
  
  


In his more self-aggrandizing moments, David thinks he’s pretty good at giving massages, actually. Patrick had seemed to think so as well, given that he’d become so relaxed that David had had to put him to bed before the movie ended. 

So he shouldn’t be surprised, he supposes, that Patrick steps out of the shower a week later, a few days before Cabaret’s opening night, and sidles up to David with a plaintive expression. 

“David,” he says, wrapping David’s waist in his bare arms. His whole chest is bare, actually; he’d only bothered to put on pajama bottoms in the bathroom, apparently, and his chest is soft and smells of the soap from the store and David does  _ not _ mind having it pressed along his back, even if it is currently making it difficult to continue eating from the ice cream tub. “David, would you give me another massage? Pretty pretty please?” 

“Hmm, begging’s not a good look for you,” David lies, the flush in his face a pleasant counterpoint to the last bit of chocolate ripple on his tongue. Patrick asks for things so infrequently and it’s a  _ very _ good look for him when he does. “Shouldn’t you be doing massage trains with your theater troupe?” 

“Bob just doesn’t have your touch.” 

“Well. That’s fair.” He closes the ice cream reluctantly and turns in Patrick’s arms. “Go put a shirt on then.” 

“I actually thought you could do me like this.” Patrick waggles his little eyebrows; he thinks he’s so cute. “Seeing as I’m your boyfriend and not your mother.” 

“Ha! Thank goodness for that.” But he can’t seem to stop frowning at Patrick’s chest, which doesn’t deserve to be frowned at, not ever. He pets Patrick’s right pec consolingly. 

“Unless...you don’t want to?” Patrick ducks his head a little, trying to catch David’s gaze. “I can put a shirt on. I know my skin’s not as, ah, pristine as yours-” 

“No! I love your skin!” David protests. “Fuck. What a weird fucking sentence. That’s-” Patrick’s laughing at him, soft and gentle, more a feeling in his stomach pressed against David’s than a sound from his lips. “Hmm. I’m realizing this is a hang-up I didn’t know I had.” 

That, in turn, makes Patrick look quietly gleeful, which it just shouldn’t. He always seems delighted to discover something new with David, to be there when David discovers something new about himself. Patrick tries to hide it, to be  _ cool _ about it, which David appreciates, even though Patrick’s generally unsuccessful in his effort. He remembers the time he’d said grumpily, “I’m being difficult for the sake of being difficult, okay?” and Patrick had gotten a little teary. The man has a kink for personal growth. It’s disgusting. 

“Let me put a shirt on,” Patrick offers. 

David grips his arms before he can extract himself. “No. Don’t. Free the nipple,” he jokes half-heartedly, ghosting a thumb over Patrick’s ribs. 

“David-” 

“This isn’t the kind of physical relationship I’m used to, okay?” he huffs. “Where you, like, touch your partner without it being sexual, or even necessarily romantic. It’s like...” He flails, both hands windmilling, Patrick’s arms steady around him. “Physical touch,” he tries, the exposure of it all burning in his throat, “has always been divided for me? Into clothes-on and clothes-off? None of this, like, casual nudity.”

“Nothing about this is casual,” Patrick murmurs, unfairly. 

“No, it’s not.” David clears his throat. “The idea that I could spend an hour, or whatever, exploring your body, just to know it, not to, like, use it or get off on it or get you off, that’s - I haven’t really - there hasn’t been anyone-”

Patrick doesn’t say  _ I know _ , which David’s grateful for, though the kiss Patrick presses to the column of David’s throat feels an awful lot like understanding. 

“Do you want me to put a shirt on?” Patrick asks again. This is still new for David too, that consent doesn’t begin and end with penetration. 

“No,” David repeats, more firmly, more sure. “I - no. I want to - with you. Let me just grab some of the oils.” 

It feels so much more intimate, after all that. Patrick sits on the edge of their bed, a towel under him, head tipped forward slightly as David smoothes a lavender massage oil down either side of Patrick’s spine, up the sides of his ribs, over the broad ridge of his shoulders. He’s perfectly responsive: humming at the first cool touch of David’s fingers, stifling moans when David digs in a bit, rolling his neck after a particularly satisfying release. 

He looks beautiful like this, David thinks, his skin shining in the low light from the bedside lamp. Patrick has muscles David didn’t even know a person could have, but they’re - he doesn’t look like any of the underwear models David had known, before. They’d all looked like paper-thin skin stretched over tight muscle, they’d all looked like diets of egg whites and green smoothies and illicit supplements. Patrick is muscular but in the way David imagines old-timey farmhands would look, thick and sturdy and practical. David remembers telling Roland on a shopping trip that elegant and durable rarely go hand in hand; he smiles, knowing now that at least for Patrick, they do. 

It turns out, perhaps completely unsurprisingly, that he likes exploring Patrick like this.  _ Loves it.  _ Some of the motivation is obvious, like the filthy groan Patrick emits when David uses his elbow to loosen a tight spot under Patrick's shoulder blade. But it's also just - soft, and calm, and ... safe?, spending time together like this. 

He also, of course, just really fucking loves Patrick’s shoulders. It’s an undeniable fact, a magnetic pull, like his mouth towards anything with artisanal salted caramel and his personal spending towards his credit limit. He spread his hands over those shoulders now, encompassing as much of Patrick’s skin as possible with his own. He can’t believe they haven’t done this before. He wants to do  _ all the things _ \- the dirty things, certainly, pressing a nail into Patrick’s skin until it leaves a mark, biting at every private mole and freckle, licking visible veins and sneaking a hand below his waistband. But he just wants to push and drag Patrick’s skin and fat and muscle between his fingers, move it senselessly, just to feel it move, just to know Patrick’s body in this unsexy, deeply sensual way. 

He decides his work is done when his ministrations are no longer drawing out any sounds from Patrick, like a bag of popcorn that’s petered out in the microwave. He scrubs his hands up and down the expanse of Patrick’s pale back one more time, then sighs. 

“How’s that?” he asks, patting Patrick professionally on the side of his arm. 

“David.” Patrick’s head rolls back, a full circle, not a crackle to be heard. “That was - god.” 

“Hmm.” He flips the towel up over Patrick’s slick skin so that he can press himself along the length of his back. “Thank you for letting me do that,” he murmurs in Patrick’s ear. 

“Thank  _ me _ ?” Patrick twists to look at him, almost nose-to-nose. “David, I feel more relaxed than I have in months. Thank  _ you _ .” 

“Well, I’m glad we could both benefit,” David says loftily, the way he knows he does when he’s pleased and struggling to hide it. “I did not... hate... doing that. And I’m proud of you,” he presses on, before Patrick can tease him. “For asking for something you wanted.” 

He can almost feel Patrick’s blush against his own cheek. “I mean, it wasn’t a big deal, right? I wasn’t asking for a - a sex swing, or something.” 

“Well,  _ that _ would be a far less complicated request, honestly. But we both know how you are, honey.” 

“Huh.” Patrick slips his hand under David’s forearm where it’s resting on Patrick’s thigh and begins to trace its soft underside. “So you’re basically saying that it would be the strong, healthy thing to do to ask you for massages more often?” 

“Oh, definitely,” David smiles. “Exposure therapy, in a way.” 

“I’ll take that under advisement.” His thumb, when he grips David’s chin to kiss him, smells of lavender. 

  
  
  


And okay, maybe David lets it get a bit out of hand. That’s kind of his only speed, though, to be fair. There are many things he won’t follow through on, like getting lights installed in their store or calling their caterer to negotiate the price for the wedding. But when he’s really interested in something, when he feels intellectually stimulated and inspired, he goes  _ deep _ . 

In the months that follow, he spends his spare moments between working at the store and planning for the wedding with his nose to his phone, watching videos and reading articles, exploring reflexology and chiropractic and deep tissue massage techniques. He grabs Patrick as he passes in the stockroom or the kitchen and tests out little movements, explores spots he didn’t know could carry stress. He finds himself unconsciously imagining his hands on Patrick’s body at random times, his fingers moving in the air as if Patrick’s spine were an invisible piano. 

And Patrick does ask, most of the time. After a Cabaret performance, in the morning after sleeping crooked, when he’s taut from a baseball game or stressed from a vendor who’s stretching the terms of their contract. The first time David gives Patrick a butt massage, their shared giggles quickly give way in the face of Patrick’s unapologetic groans of relief. If they have sex after - well, they’d restrained themselves fairly well, all things considered. 

But now - it’s a few days after their engagement photos, and Patrick’s still a little golden from the failed spray tan, and he’s spread across their bed, ass-up, totally naked, shining with massage oils in late afternoon sunlight. He looks like the rings he put on David’s fingers; he looks like David’s very own Academy Award statue, if Oscar decided to buff up a bit. He’s glorious. David still can’t believe  _ Patrick _ thinks  _ he’s _ the one getting the best side of this deal. 

“Oh, David,” Patrick grunts into the pillows as David’s thumbs thrust into Patrick’s calf. “You’re like the fucking Rachmaninoff of massages.” 

“Someone’s been reviewing the music options for the ceremony, I see,” David chuckles. He’s preening from the praise, of  _ course _ ; he’s gotten really fucking good at this. “You look so pretty like this, Patrick.” 

“Mm.” Patrick wiggles his hips half-heartedly, and David scratches the back of his knee lightly, tickling the sensitive skin. “I’d say you should start doing this professionally, or, like, offering sessions at the store, or teaching classes, but I don’t think I want to share you.” 

“Ew!” David slides down to Patrick’s ankle, fondling it - it’s a horrible word, but there’s no other way to express what he’s doing, and they’re  _ engaged _ , so he’s going to fucking fondle his fiance’s ankle if he wants - and smoothing the oils over Patrick’s feet. “As if I’d touch anybody else’s naked body.” 

“Only  _ my  _ naked body,” Patrick mumbles. He’s getting zenned-out already, barely five minutes in, voice slurred and drunken. David  _ loves it _ . “You love my skin. You said so.” 

“Well, you  _ have _ made significant progress in the realm of moisturizing, thanks to me, so.” He uses the heel of his palm to work upwards through the muscles of Patrick’s leg, making a rolling action. Patrick’s ass clenches slightly as fingertips brush the underside of his cheeks, but then he relaxes back into it, warm and pliant. “Your skin can thank me.” 

“Thank you, David,” Patrick calls in a high, sing-songy voice. “That was my skin. Thanking you.” 

“Oh my god,  _ ew _ .” 

Mostly it’s silent, though, and meditative. David loves that maybe most of all, about these massages. Not that he doesn’t love talking to Patrick - he thinks he’s been pretty clear on how much he likes that - but to be comfortably silent with someone? That feels hefty, in the way things keep feeling with Patrick: hefty, new, singular, remarkable, crazy-scary-big. 

Patrick falls asleep before David’s even halfway up his back. David finishes anyway, because he’s a serial completionist. Then he draws a big, cartoonish heart in the slick oil on Patrick’s skin and moves aside to lay down next to his fiance, where he falls asleep with Patrick's even, relaxed breaths on his neck. 

  
  


**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Those Heavenly Limbs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27291937) by [Amanita_Fierce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amanita_Fierce/pseuds/Amanita_Fierce)




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